


Enter the Penguins

by Marian_De_Haan



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, Post-Episode: s02e08: Hostage, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 11:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20723312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marian_De_Haan/pseuds/Marian_De_Haan
Summary: Avon and Vila meet some unusual penguins while on a mission.





	Enter the Penguins

**Author's Note:**

> Published in Trooper Orac's Fantastic Plastic Army. Reproduced here on the author's behalf and with the author's permission.

"Oh", Vila moaned, landing hard on his bottom amidst a ﬂurry of snow. "Look what you've brought me into!"

Dropping down into the snow beside him, Avon gave Vila a withering look. "Try to get your facts right! It was Blake's idea that we should go and plant those time bombs in that Federation installation."

"It was your idea to overestimate the time needed," Vila countered, "to give us the chance to empty their safe before Liberator's return to pick us up."

"It was stupid of me to rely on you to get that safe open without setting off the alarm!"

"It was YOUR tampering with the security system that triggered the alarm!"

Ignoring the accusation, Avon cast a cautious glance over the snow wall. The dome of the Federation base glistered in the yellowish light of the planet's three moons. In the clear, frosty air, the details could be seen as easily as in full daylight. There was no fence — with the peninsula surrounded by sea on three sides and cut off from the main land by a ridge of high, snow-covered mountains, the complex had no need for one. Besides, the Arctic planet housed no native human population.

With dismay Avon saw the trail of their footprints leading through the snowﬁeld straight to their hideout, which was no more than a shallow dip behind a wall of snow. There weren't yet any troopers in sight, but he knew that was just a question of time. They'd want to dress up warmly before venturing out for their search.

"I'm cold," Vila complained.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten how to adjust the setting of your thermal suit!" Avon glanced at his watch. Still eighteen minutes to go before the agreed pickup time. Too long! He cursed silently. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Blake's habit of leading from the front didn't give them many chances for combining a mission with some private enterprise. As Blake was still preoccupied with Gan's death and his brief reunion with his family on Exbar, this had seemed a golden opportunity.

"They'll catch us..." Vila's voice betrayed his rising panic.

"You don't have to spell it out, Vila!" With the snowﬁelds stretching to the sea that lapped lazily at the plateau's edges some ﬁfty metres further on, they had nowhere to go. One could say, Avon mused, that things looked bleak.

//You are distressed.//

"Cally?" Vila asked hesitantly.

So he'd heard it too. But Avon knew instinctively that the voice in his head wasn't Cally's. He turned round.

Over the snow some two dozen plump, black-and-white creatures were approaching, forming oddly shaped spots in the vast whiteness. Some of them were waggling on short, web-footed legs. Others were gliding on their bellies. More were coming from the sea, working themselves laboriously up the gentle slope.

"Penguins," Vila exclaimed. "They're polar birds. I've seen them in the Delta Zoo."

"Where they should have kept you." Never having had the slightest interest in natural history, Avon eyed the penguins warily. They all looked the same to him, podgy and ugly, with sharp beaks and beadlike eyes.

Despite their awkward way of moving, the penguins approached them fast. The vanguard came to a halt at about six metres distance. One bird trotted forward.

// Why are you distressed? //

"They're telepathic!" Vila exclaimed.

"Don't be ridiculous!" But Avon couldn't think of any other source for the voice in his head.

Vila squatted down in front of the leading penguin. "How do you do? I'm Vila Restal, pleased to meet you." He held out his hand.

Avon opened his mouth to berate him, but the words stuck in his throat when he saw the penguin extend a — could one call it a paw?

Needing to hang on to reality, Avon turned his back on the spectre of Vila shaking hands with a penguin. One look at the Federation base made him duck. "Vila, they're coming!"

Vila let go of the penguin's 'hand'. "They'll catch us!" His eyes grew wide with horror.

// You are no friends of them? //

"Deﬁnitely not," Vila replied, as if talking with telepathic penguins was an every day occurrence. "They'll kill us when they catch us."

"And they WILL catch us," Avon said, to bring Vila — and himself — back to reality. "In that snow our footsteps are a dead give-away."

//Do not despair.//

The mass of penguins — now more than hundred, Avon estimated, and still more were coming from the sea — began to move towards the trail in the snow. In no time that part of the snowﬁeld was teeming with trampling and gliding birds, obliterating all footsteps.

Avon turned his gaze back to the leading bird. Clearly this called for some re-appraisal. "Thank you," he said solemnly.

//They are impolite,// came the response in his head. Not in words, Avon noticed with the ﬁrst stirrings of interest, but in thoughts that were as clear as words. //They ignore us.//

Maybe they didn't receive the thoughts, Avon reﬂected. After all, he and Vila had become attuned to telepathic voices - Cally's anyway. "How come you are telepathic?"

//It developed after our transfer to this planet.//

"How did you get here?" Vila asked.

//When our habitat on Earth was destroyed, we were brought here. The sea is rich in food. Our saviours left. These new humans came only recently.//

"We know." Vila made a gesture in the direction 0f the base. "It's their newest communication centre, built to boost the transmissions in this sector. But it won't be here for much longer. And Blake reckons that they'll not have the resources to build it up again. This planet being so far out on the spiral rim, you see."

The leading penguin seemed to be listening earnestly. Avon wondered how much of Vila's prattle it could follow. Suddenly the bird lifted its head. //They are coming this way. Lie down. We will protect you.//

Vila immediately dropped onto his belly. After the briefest of hesitations, Avon followed his example. At once they were surrounded by penguins. A stench of ﬁsh and something he couldn't fathom overwhelmed Avon, nearly making him gag. Keeping his face down, he felt the birds step onto his body. They were unexpectedly heavy.

"I'm going to get bruised all over," Vila moaned softly.

"Shut up," Avon hissed. "They'll hear you."

"It's all right for you," Vila mumbled. "Cally isn't likely to massage MY back!"

Avon smiled to himself. He wouldn't get that kind of service from her either, but Vila needn't know that. He didn't dare to raise his head, but he sensed that the troopers were very near now. Vila must have caught on, too, for he kept his mouth shut.

Flat on his belly, with the penguins trampling all over him, Avon felt very uncomfortable. It was incredible how much noise the penguins made, his hood seemed to do little to muffle the stamping, pufﬁng and splashing. At least the thermal suit protected him against the cold. And with the suits as white as the snow, they would be difﬁcult to detect beneath the mass of moving penguins.

Not daring to move to consult his watch, Avon had no idea of the passing of time. The birds seemed to grow heavier by the minute. The stench was abominable. Above the sound of stamping feet and ﬂapping wings, he could detect human voices, mostly indistinct.

Suddenly he heard someone cry: "They must have gone to the mountains, Section leader."

The reply was lost, but Avon didn't think they would risk their lives searching there. With perverse fatalism he waited for Vila to make a move and betray their position. But the sound that ﬂared up in the frosty air was the chime of his teleport bracelet.

Damn Blake!

//Do not fret. They have gone.//

Feeling the penguins stepping from his body, Avon brought the bracelet to his mouth. "Avon."

"This is Cally. Liberator will be in teleport range in ﬁve minutes."

"Not too soon!" Vila sat up, rubbing his arms. "Pins and needles."

"Get us up the moment you can, Cally. Out." Avon rose. A quick glance over the snow wall conﬁrmed that the troopers were disappearing back inside the base.

//You will leave?//

Avon turned to face the leading penguin. "Yes."

"Things will get unhealthy here, when those bombs go off," Vila said.

Avon frowned. The explosion would kill all life on the peninsula. Not that he cared, but... "You'll be safe in the sea. The water will break the shock wave. Go as deep as you can."

//We will take your advice.//

Immediately the various hordes began to glide to the nearest beach. The leading penguin held out his right wing.

//Goodbye.//

Vila took the wing in both hands. "Thanks for hiding us."

//We thank you for restoring the land to us.//

Vila let go of the wing. The penguin remained holding it outstretched. Clearly it was Avon's turn. Feeling utterly ridiculous, Avon gingerly touched the wing. He couldn't say because of his glove but he thought it felt sleek. Over the bird's head he saw penguins diving into the water all along the coastline. Soon the leading bird was the only still on the land.

"You'd better go back to the sea," Avon said. "That base will go up as soon as we've departed." He wasn't going to explain to Blake the need to delay the detonation because of a telepathic penguin.

//I will go now.// The wing slid smoothly from Avon's loose grip. The penguin began to waggle to the coast.

"Blake's never going to believe this," Vila remarked while gazing after the bird.

"Then we'd better not tell him," Avon said.

Vila grinned. "Yeah. He might want to recruit them."

"One minute, Avon," Cally announced.

The penguin was still a long way from the water.

"He's not going to make it!" Vila began to run. When he reached the penguin he swept it up and carried it in his arms to the sea.

Avon found himself running after Vila, he didn't know why. Must be to prevent him from falling into the sea, he thought sourly.

Vila reached the steep slope and put the penguin down at the edge. The bird immediately threw itself forward into the calm waves. For a moment they saw its black and white coat shimmer beneath the water, then it dived out of sight.

//Goodbye, friends.// First there was only the one voice, then it multiplied until their heads were ﬁlled with the valediction. It must have drowned out Cally's warning for suddenly they found themselves back in Liberator's teleport bay.

Blake, standing in front of the console, reached over to activate the communicator. "Jenna, detonate! Then get us out of here." He turned to Avon: "All went well?"

"Yes." He began to zip open his thermal suit. Vila was already climbing out of his. They were wearing tight trousers and sweaters under it, Vila's brown and Avon's black. Cally rose from the console. "What's that?" she asked.

Avon followed her gaze to Vila's thermal suit, which he'd left in a heap on the floor, the back up. The white fabric was covered with blots of ﬁlth. Many blots of ﬁlth, some of which bore the imprints of webbed feet.

"Hey?" Vila, already on his way out, came back to stare at his suit.

"It looks like bird shit," Blake said.

"From very large birds," Cally observed.

Avon stepped from his suit. He saw that its back was equally smeared. Those damned penguins had been shitting all over them! Hence the stench and splashing sounds.

Safely back on Liberator, he'd already begun to wonder whether their adventure hadn't been an illusion. But this bird shit was real. That was the one thing you could rely on in life: the shit was always real!

"Must have happened while we were inside," Vila said quickly. "We left the suits outside, you see."

"That's right, Blake." Avon bent to pick up the suits. "Looks like they caught the attention of the local wildlife population." Pushing the suits into Vila's hands, he said: "Put them in the cleaning unit."

"Why me?"

"Do it, Vila," Blake said, his thoughts clearly on other matters. "Avon, I want you to gather all the available information on the planet Albian."

Avon opened his mouth to ask "Why?", then thought better of it. It would be what Blake expected. Avon had the disconcerting feeling that he was becoming too predictable. He wanted Blake to continue fretting about his motives!

Stepping back to let the muttering Vila pass with his soiled load, he gave Blake an amiable smile: "Albian, that's a Federation planet, isn't it? Zen's bound to have something in its databanks. And I'll set Orac to work on it too."

Although gone in a second, Blake's bewildered frown did not escape him. With a feeling of satisfaction, Avon left the teleport room. Telepathic penguins might be slightly unsettling, idealistic freedom ﬁghters were a species he could deal with.


End file.
